The traditional solid wood flooring system shown in FIG. 1 consists of a single piece of solid wood machine profiled into a wood plank of various thicknesses and widths. The finished plank usually contains a “tongue” 25 on one side of the board and a “groove” 26 on the opposite side of the board (lengthwise). Making solid flooring generally requires larger sizes raw materials than the final products. This process generates a lot of waste lumber since smaller pieces of strips cannot be used. In addition, solid flooring is generally considered dimensionally unstable.
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of the conventional solid wood flooring. The multi-ply engineered wood flooring system are usually manufactured with multiple layers (as many as eleven) of veneer of various thicknesses and glued together with the grain of the veneers running in perpendicular directions to form a final assembled product. The process of arranging the veneers (23) perpendicular to each other offers this type of flooring more dimensional stability when compared to the solids. However, this process utilizes adhesive chemicals to bond each layer of veneers together under pressure. Each layer of adhesive joint (24) could potentially fail and cause separation between the layers known in the industry as “delaminating” of the product. In addition, the amount and types of adhesive chemicals used to produce this type of engineered flooring could be harmful to human health.
FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of the traditional multi-layered engineered wood flooring. There is a need for a flooring product that reinforces sustainable forest product harvest practice methods, utilizes fewer raw materials, uses less adhesive chemical in the manufacturing process as well as possessing performance dimensional stability and aesthetic characteristics of traditional flooring planks. Previous attempts to create such flooring planks have included other 2-ply flooring with grain orientation running perpendicular to each other. These attempts, although similar, generally still do not offer great structural solutions to the common lengthwise “bowing” and widthwise “cupping” of the final finished products.